Frank #3 Page 4

  “It’s just that if I had some kind of information that might help me do my job better and take it to the criminal element, or if someone pointed me in the right direction I could take it from there. That would be all I needed.”

  It takes me a second to understand what Officer Appleby wants, but before I can say anything his phone rings.

  “Chief Myers!” Officer Appleby exclaims. His voice is suddenly high-pitched and ridiculous. “Yes, sir—Absolutely, sir—Excellent joke, sir!—No sir, wasn’t doing anything at all—Always a pleasure to help you, sir, I’ll be right on my way!”

  He hangs up and puffs his chest out. “You have to sound professional when talking to your superiors.”

  “Very professional,” I agree.

  He sighs. His chest collapses like a flattened ball. “Well, just keep writing.”

  CHAPTER 8

  WHO ARE YOU?

  The dogs on my block go crazy when Toni walks down the street. She must look like an alien to them. She’s over again wearing her usual black, sitting in her usual spot on the opposite side of the living room. Honestly, I’m feeling a little crazy myself. I don’t like her at all, not even a little bit—so I’m not sure why I felt giddy when I opened the door for her. Why I couldn’t stop thinking about her this morning before she came over? I can’t even pretend to watch TV today. She sets up her easel slowly and unzips the bag she carries her canvas in. She lays out her pencils and brushes and paints gently. She reminds me of a mother, the way she touches things. Mamá used to hold Tomás like that, like he’d break into a million pieces if she was too rough. Toni sits in a little square of morning light and starts sketching.

  “You’d be a lot prettier if you didn’t wear black all the time,” I say.

  It’s a long time before she says anything back. “Who are you to tell me what I should wear?”

  “I was trying to give you a compliment.”

  “That’s not a compliment.”

  The jersey I’m wearing is a throwback I put on for her, hoping she’d say something. It’s green and white and I’ve gotten lucky every time I’ve worn it. She hasn’t even noticed. Now it feels childish, like something Tomás would wear. Somehow, everything I do feels like the wrong thing. My face feels too brown, my legs feel too short, my jokes feel too stupid. Yesterday I made a joke about Mamá’s breath that’s worked a million times before but when Toni didn’t laugh I wanted to disappear into a black hole.

  In the afternoon Mamá comes to check on us. Tomás is wrapped around her leg, sucking his thumb as usual.

  “How are you, Toni?” Mamá asks. “Is there anything you need? Is Frankie bugging you?”

  “I’m fine,” she says, looking at me. “We’re good.”

  Tomás takes his thumb out of his mouth and stands next to me. He holds his arms straight in front of him like Harry Potter. Since he saw the movie he’s been going around casting spells on everybody. I start to feel something heavy twist in my stomach.

  “Did you tell her you have other girlfriends?” Tomás says.

  Toni doesn’t look up from the canvas so I can’t tell if she heard or not. If Mamá weren’t here I’d wipe the smile right off of Tomás’s face. “Get out of here,” I say. I remind myself to laugh. “You always say stupid things.” I turn to Toni. “He always says stupid things.”

  “You said that if you want a girl to like you, you have to tell her you have a bunch of girlfriends. If that doesn’t work I can cast a charm spell on her!”

  I stare at him so hard he rewraps himself around Mamá’s leg.

  As soon as Mamá leaves, I change the subject.

  “So, have you always been creative?” I ask.

  “I like writing, I like drawing,” Toni says. “Your mom got me into painting.”

  “So, it helps you with stress or what? I think that’s why she does it.”

  “No, but I don’t know how to explain it so you’d get it. It’s like when everything you have inside needs to get out right now and there’s only one way to let it out that feels good.”

  “Oh, like basketball.”

  She peeks around the easel. Her lips are pressed together tight. “No, not like basketball.”

  “Yeah, for me it is. It’s like when I’m playing, nobody gets to judge me. No one gets to tell me nothing. And even if I mess up, no one’s going to tell me I ruined my life. I can be mad or happy or sad and it’s all good. I’m just free.”

  Toni’s pencil scratches the canvas.

  “So,” I say, “we’re both artists.”

  She stops sketching and peeks around the easel again. “No. We’re not.”

  “Yes we are.” I can tell she’s a little angry and for some reason this makes me feel good. “I’ll bet you I could do your art before you do mine.”

  “Basketball isn’t art.”

  “How about this. If I write a story, you gotta come hoop with me.”

  Sure, this bet isn’t fair. She doesn’t know that I know a million stories anyway. But I’ll feel guilty about that some other time.

  “Huh?” she asks. “Aren’t you hurt?”

  I stand up and do a jumping jack. “All better.”

  Officer Appleby surprises me tonight. He usually doesn’t come two days in a row. We sit outside, on the front steps. The crickets shout whiny, annoying songs. It’s cool, almost cold, but Officer Appleby’s forehead is sweaty. I keep looking inside, hoping Papá or Mamá will call me in for something, anything. He flips through my journal again, pausing on the drawing.

  “Who is this?” he asks.

  “That’s me,” I say.

  “Oh.” Officer Appleby’s shoulders slump. He wipes his forehead. “Frank, I think I was being a little too indirect the other day. I want to be clear. A relationship is a two-way street. It requires that both parties enter into a mutually beneficial relationship. I have treated you kindly, have I not?”

  I don’t know where he’s going with this, but I nod.

  “I’ve been good to you,” Officer Appleby continues. “For that, I expect cooperation. Shakespeare wrote that a friend should bear another friend’s infirmities. Specifically, I expect to get information from you about what’s going on in the neighborhood. Any kinds of”—he uses his fingers to make air quotes—”‘activities.’ That way, everybody wins. I look good and you stay out of court. Frank, as of right now, I do not think you are holding up your end of the bargain.”

  “So you want me to tell you about ‘activities.’ Meaning rat people out.”

  “Well, now you’re putting words in my mouth.”

  “What makes you think I even know people involved in ‘activities’?”

  Officer Appleby smiles sadly. “Who are we kidding here, Frank? You do bad things. You want me to believe you don’t know other people also doing bad things?”

  I open my mouth but nothing comes out. A weird, painful pulsing starts behind my eyes. All the times I suckered kids and I never knew what it felt like until right now. Five minutes ago Officer Appleby put Tomás on his back and crawled across the floor like a wild stallion. Now this. I don’t know which Appleby to believe. I can’t tell which one is the real one.

  Journal #4

  The Ventrilian War raged for a thousand years before anyone on Earth noticed. It’s true that the war was originally fought two light-years away, in galaxies too dark and distant for the human eye, but the signs were all there. Rubble from the battles, what humans call “space rocks,” had been falling onto Earth for centuries, where they were put in cold museums or kept in cardboard boxes by curious children. Battles were waged by throwing superheated balls of gas—on Earth those were called “shooting stars.” Everything humans needed to know was around them, and when the last ship left Earth, and the last people born on Earth looked back out of the windows and saw every ocean burning, they knew they only had themselves to
blame.

  There had been hope at one point, before mankind went mad and turned on itself. It was no surprise that this happened, since humans are known around the galaxy for their capacity for blood. Their brains are simply not as developed as other galactic life forms. But early on there was hope. Two children had stumbled upon a discovery. Their names were Jank and Moni. They were opposites, so it’d be easy to assume they were natural enemies. Moni was cruel. She didn’t like being nice to people. She got good grades in school, but she was also a kind of know-it-all, and there was no evidence that she had friends of any kind. On the other hand, Jank was loved in the small town they lived in. He may have been a little short for his age but that didn’t stop him from being popular. He was captain of the local football team. Oftentimes his mother had to stand in the yard with a broom to keep his admirers at bay. What Jank saw in Moni the universe may never know, but without these two lovers, no one from mankind would’ve survived.

  CHAPTER 9

  BACK IN BUSINESS

  “Jank and Moni?” Toni asks.

  “What?” I say.

  “That’s terrible.” She tries to hide a laugh. “You really think I have no friends?”

  “No, that’s Moni.”

  “Right, right. Moni.”

  “So you like it. I can tell you like it.”

  She reads the story again, shaking her head occasionally. “I said it’s not bad. I’m not saying it’s good, either.”

  She is sitting on the floor below her easel, drawing little skeletons on her hand. For the first time she’s taken her boots off. She has these little black feet that squirt around the carpet like worms. Why do I get so excited when I learn something new about her? Yesterday she let me wash a couple of her brushes in the sink. I held the brushes under the warm water and wondered what it might feel like if she ran her hands through my hair. I can’t even help it. I’m lost in the sauce. I’ve been daydreaming about her more and more now that the painting’s almost done.

  “So,” I say, “I guess you’re coming with me to practice.”

  She groans. “I’m so out of shape. I actually used to play. I wasn’t going to tell you.”

  I give her this look. Is this girl for real?

  It’s like she reads my mind. “For real. But I stopped having time.”

  I nudge her in the ribs. “It’s all good. I’ll show you how to dunk.”

  She laughs. It’s loud, the kind of laugh that makes you feel a lot funnier than you are. She tries to cover it with her hand and glances at me, waiting for me to say something.

  “You don’t like your own laugh?” I ask.

  “Not really,” she says.

  “Your own laugh that you were born with?”

  “Help me wash a couple brushes.”

  She walks over to the sink. This side of her is new, too, the side that won’t say what she really thinks. But something tells me not to push it. I get up and help her.

  “No,” Coach Wise says. He’s dragged me over to the water fountains so we can talk in private. “We have enough players.”

  “No we don’t,” I say. “We could use a sub so we can get rest.”

  Toni is standing with Janae, trying to dribble the ball between her legs. She’s doing a pretty good job, even with combat boots on.

  “Then I will find us a sub,” Coach Wise says.

  I fold my arms. “If she’s not on the team, I’m not on the team.”

  Coach Wise growls. “I can’t even—after everything we’ve—you want to ruin this for a—” He stomps back toward the court and blows his whistle.

  I didn’t mean for it to be like this. But since Toni finished her painting there was a chance I’d never see her again. That’s what she does to me—she makes me sound all dramatic. But at the end of the day, I can hang out with her if she’s on the team. Everything else we can worry about later.

  During dribbling drills, Justin wants to know if she’s my new girl.

  “Yeah,” I say. “No. Maybe.”

  I don’t know with Toni. She’s the biggest puzzle I’ve ever encountered. She’s decent at ball and agrees to come to practices and join Team Blacktop. She laughs at my jokes now, at the stories I tell about cutting school to chase geese at the park. She listens when I tell her my dreams, the plans I have for my future millions. She even showed me a corner of her painting the other day, the part with my foot propped up on a bunch of pillows. It’s way prettier than my foot actually is. But she’s never tried to hold my hand. She doesn’t play with her hair when we’re talking. Whenever I give her a long look, the thing everyone knows is supposed to lead to a kiss, she looks away. Today we walked under the Kissing Tree. It’s got a heart-shaped trunk and the leaves make a soft shushing sound when you walk under them. I’ve kissed a million girls under here. But when we walked under it, and I told Toni it was the Kissing Tree, she peeled some of the bark off and said it was actually a chestnut. “An invasive species.”

  Am I doing something wrong here or what?

  Journal #5

  Jank and Moni had history. They grew up on neighboring farms, in a small town on the outskirts of the badlands. They both rode horses and oftentimes they placed first and second in the county jumping shows. One day, they were riding out near the badlands at dusk when they stumbled upon a small metallic boulder. It was smoldering, too hot to touch. Jank, being the brave one, took his shirt off and tried to pick it up. It immediately sprang to life and spoke in a harsh metallic voice: “WHICHEVER TWO PEOPLE FIND THIS MESSAGE MUST AGREE TO BE TOGETHER FOR LIFE OR EARTH WILL BE DESTROYED.” The pod shut, grew very bright, and vanished into itself.

  Jank and Moni looked at each other.

  Be together? Jank asked.

  You and me? Moni asked.

  They didn’t know then that they were Earth’s last chance. They didn’t know that a hundred million alien ships were descending from all corners of the universe on the planet as they spoke. And they didn’t know yet that the only reason anyone on Earth would survive was because of their love.

  I guess we have to be together, said Jank.

  I don’t know, said Moni.

  We have to do it for the universe, said Jank.

  What if this is all just a big misunderstanding? said Moni.

  They rode back to their farms and spent the night in the barn, talking. They were just kids, fifteen years old, not even old enough for a license. And now they had to save the world. Moni started crying and Jank held her in his big, strong arms. They looked up through the skylight of the barn and saw the distant lights of the spaceships descending.

  That’s when they decided that it was their duty to fall in love, that they would do it for the rest of humanity.

  I think I love you, Jank said.

  I think I love you, too, Moni said.

  CHAPTER 10

  IS THIS LOVE?

  Toni’s scratching her head. “I just don’t get why the aliens would want them to be together.”

  “That’s the mysterious part,” I say. “I’ll get to that later. The important thing is that they’re together.”

  “And also isn’t this the plot of that one Will Smith movie?”

  “I’ll fix that.”

  We’re sitting in the backyard, watching waves of long grass go flat in the breeze. Actually, I’m watching Toni’s mouth. I like watching the words form on her lips. Sometimes I’m so focused I actually miss what she’s saying.

  You know how you can talk to someone about everything and nothing at the same time? We look out at the grass or up at the clouds and just say whatever pops into our heads. She’s a vegetarian, she goes to an art school during the year, she can burp the alphabet. She can’t pronounce the word “sarcophagus.” She got her period when she was eleven but didn’t tell anyone until she was thirteen. These are things she never tells anybody, she says. I tell her ab
out the fights, the joyriding, the teachers I’ve made cry. But it’s not like before, when I said this stuff to impress girls. Now it’s just another thing we talk about. It feels like something special, something real, with just the two of us sitting there and clouds like spaceships overhead, but when I lean in for the kiss, she pulls back.

  “I thought you were feeling me,” I say quickly.

  “I mean, yes, I think you’re cool,” she says.

  “Well?”

  Toni sighs. “This always happens.”

  I’m confused. I wait for her to say something, and when she doesn’t I nudge her.

  “It’s not that I don’t like you. But this always—I’m always—I never know what to do.”

  When I look up for something to say, the clouds look like chopped off heads.

  “Every dumb movie,” Toni says, “when a girl gets close to a guy, she’s supposed to feel a certain way, do certain kinds of things. But every time I try to feel that way it doesn’t work. I’ve tried and tried and it never works.”

  “Maybe it was something I did?”

  I start thinking of all the things wrong with me: My eyes are too far apart, my feet are too big for my body, I sleep in the same bed as my kid brother, I got a record a mile long, I don’t speak very good Spanish, I write stupid stories—

  “It’s not you, Frank,” she says, “it’s not.”

  She exhales hard. I’ve tried everything with this girl, everything I’ve watched Papá do, everything that’s worked in the past, everything I can remember from the movies.

  “Maybe it’s just the wrong setting—”

  “You idiot, listen to me. Actually listen to me. Think about what I’m telling you.”

  CHAPTER 11

  THINGS JUST GOT VERY REAL

  Officer Appleby says he has good news and bad news. He’s in a better mood than he has been in weeks. He bounces across the living room, twirling a lanyard around his finger.